Contributed by the Design Theory and Methodology Committee of ASME for publication in the JOURNAL OF MECHANICAL DESIGN. Manuscript received May 15, 2016; final manuscript received October 11, 2016; published online November 14, 2016. Assoc. Editor: Kristina Shea.

Abstract

Modular design is an effective approach to shorten lead-time and reduce cost for development of complex products and systems (CoPS). Because the physical details of the product are not available at the conceptual design stage, considerations in the downstream product development phases such as manufacturing and assembly cannot be used for partition of modules at the conceptual design stage. Since design solution at the conceptual design stage can be modeled by functions and relationships among these functions such as function flows including information flows, material flows, and energy flows, a novel approach is introduced in this research for function module partition of CoPS through community detection using weighted and directed complex networks (WDCN). First, the function structure is obtained and mapped into a weighted and directed complex network. Based on the similarity between behaviors of communities in WDCN and behaviors of modules in CoPS, a LinkRank-based community detection approach is employed for function module partition through optimization with simulated annealing. The function module partition for the power mechanism in a large tonnage crawler crane is conducted as a case study to demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed approach.

The function modules of power mechanism obtained by the LRC algorithm: (a) power source module, (b) lifting module, (c) Luffing module, (d) rotation module, (e) traveling module, and (f) the group of C6–C9 represents the cooling module of the power mechanism

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